EDITORIAL: Dutchess County voters deserve better

In 2010, the redistricting process, by county law, was headed to a citizens commission that would have had a fighting chance of stripping self-interest from the process.

Such a commission would not necessarily have guaranteed the best possible outcome, but it would have had the distinct virtue of keeping the redistricting power out of the hands of legislators.

So, what did the Legislature's Republican majority do?

In the dead of night (1:45 a.m. Dec. 8, 2010, to be exact), they repealed the local law requiring an independent commission and took the power back to the Legislature.

In other words, they gave the responsibility to the least objective people on the face of the Earth insofar as Dutchess County legislative districts are concerned.

The resulting plan will go to a public hearing 7 p.m. Wednesday and -- shock of shocks -- the guiding principle of the redistricting would appear to have been the protection of incumbents.

The lines were drawn expressly to ensure that no two incumbents should find themselves in the same new district, lest they face the indignity of actually having to run against one another for re-election.

"There was no support for doing that on either side," said Legislature Chairman Robert Rolison, R-Poughkeepsie.

In other words, the collective interests of 297,488 people were subordinated to the narrow interests of 25 incumbents.

Once we've taken care of us, people, you 297,463 can do whatever it is you do at the ballot box.

This is but a permutation of the cynical practice of incumbents choosing their voters, rather than voters choosing their representatives.

As Dare Thompson, president of the Mid-Hudson League of Women Voters put it, making the separation of incumbents a goal of redistricting "corrupts the process."

The people of Dutchess County deserved better, easily could have had better, and, indeed, would have had better if not for the arrogant refusal of legislators to give democracy a chance.